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The Studious Bloggers at Council Blogs are sticklers for protocol. In a discussion about citing references the question arose, “How do you do footnotes in WordPress?” Of course in a hypertexted world you would want to be able to move to the note and back again all with your virtual placeholder. Here we put the code together for the three little pig story.

The three little pigs built their houses out of straw[1], sticks[2], and bricks[3]

Quadcopters have come on the scene in a big way. Here at Council Blogs we took a break from WordPress discussions and talked about quad copter technology. The DJI Phantom has an on-board camera complete with a gimbal that allows the camera to stay steady as the craft has to pitch for directional control. The quad beams down it’s live video signal to the controller which in turn acts as a WIFI hot spot to feed an idevice or an android device. The quad copter is part of the Studio YouTube portfolio of TPM Technologies. Here you can see a shot of the landing pad. If you want to see a video of some footage taken with the quadcopter you can visit one video here.

Someone was using a Post-It note to remind them to not lock their keys in the office. The designers at TPM Technologies came up with a 3D printed part that looks a little nicer than the dog-eared, barely-hanging-on note. The unit fits snuggly around the door knob cap. 3D printing is bringing all kinds of new applications to products of all kinds. You can see the projects list over at TPM Technologies by clicking here. One fascinating story in 2013 for 3D printing is Robohand. The Robohand is an open source prosthetic developed using 3D printing technology. Makers from all over the world are donating their capability to help people that need fingers. You can visit the site where they have a blog and see what is happening.

WordPress is adding a lot of functionality beyond posting and commenting. At a recent meeting of the Council Blogs we practiced at polling. You can now add a poll directly in the WordPress editor similar to an image and it will be published with your post. See the sample below.

The continual price drop of memory for computers is simply amazing. The bloggers here at the Cyber Wigwam collectively tickle close to 3 Terabytes of memory every time we meet. WordPress blogs and applications do have a bit of a memory load. The ease at which we can generate content and store it helps us to amass a tremendous amount of “stuff” in our computers and hard drives. Here at lept Like A Blog we have turned to external hard drives and USB memory sticks as storage devices. The main thing is to remember to back it up. Hours of work can quickly dissipate when a memory device fails. In one case we have worn out an SD chip where the pins have become detached and one computer will not read the chip. Luckily, not all chip readers are created equal and some of the computers at Council Blogs will still read it. Which begs the question. How big is the cloud and how often is it backed up? Just like Click and Clack, our parting close is “and don’t backup like my brother!”

Most of the bloggers here at the Cyber Wigwam have kept up posting on a regular basis. Inside of the WordPress dashboard their list of draft posts is minimal. In a few rare cases the list of draft posts is quite long.

With spring in the air and May Day around the corner it is time to think about allowing some of those great ideas to sprout. Who knows what profound thoughts lurks in those top of mind ramblings. WordPress.com has a neat feature that allows you to send a link of your draft post to trusted advisors for their feedback. It is called “Request Feedback” and is a button below the post editor box in the Writing Helper box.

Your trusted advisors will receive an email with a link to your draft. When they click on that link they can view your draft and have a box to comment. You can then look at the list of comments in the same Request Feedback box. So now that spring is here, take a look at those lists of draft posts and see what can be finished up.

If you would like to join the bloggers at the cyber wigwam for weekly posting sessions, send the Chief an email.

With April showers misting outside it is time to revisit the SEO advantage of metatags in your blogging. Sort of a strange name and WordPress has shortened it to “Tags.” All the bloggers here at the cyber wigwam have moved their Tags sidebar box up under the Publish box to be a little more prominent. Tags are one of the most important elements of getting SEO* advantage from your blog posts. It is like hanging tags on your blog post that say “Find Me!” We’ve had cases at Council Blogs where one blog post with very unique tags can be found on the first page of Google. The really neat thing that our bloggers find is that they can attach their blog posts to their other social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Maybe someday, even YouTube. At lept Like A Blog we call this the Social Media Marketing Framework.

Like the 3 elements of the shamrock there are 3 good reasons to adding blogging to your web presence. Of course, that’s assuming you have a web presence. If you don’t then adding a blog is an efficient way to develop a web presence too. Here at the Cyber wigwam the bloggers realize that having good content is what readers are attracted to.

1. “Content is King”

The more you have something genuine to say the more people will be interested to read. It doesn’t necessarily have to be profound. Just like the old adage, “be yourself.”

2. Keeping Fresh

With unique content comes great responsibility to keep it up. Consistently providing your readers with news is almost as important as the news itself. People will be attracted to your ability to keep them informed when you set a pace and stick to it. We find at Council Blogs that once a week is a good pace. You don’t kill yourself but if published regularly, your readers are kept informed.

3. News is attractive to Search Engines

Search engines like finding new stuff. What’s newer than your post with unique content? We find at the cyber wigwam that the more natural, “organic” methods for SEO incorporate consistency and good tagging. There is no better way to keep your readers satisfied and at the same time increase your “findability” than publishing your blog posts. Well, YouTube videos can be as powerful but require a little more energy to produce. Actually, some bloggers at the cyber wigwam are repurposing their blog posts into YouTube videos. That works really well too! You can find training and courses in both at lept Like A Blog.